October 2010
Sex offenders will face less supervision in the community to help save money under Government proposals, it has emerged.
Officials are looking at whether the monitoring of some convicted sex offenders can be reduced, including stopping home visits and keeping meetings to just ten minutes.
They are also examining whether some more serious offenders can have their risk assessment downgraded so supervision can be lightened.
One union leader signalled such a move could put more members of the public in danger.
It comes as a separate report found the probation service whose blunders helped leave a violent drug addict free to brutally kill two French students is still failing to carrying out proper risk assessments in half of its cases.
Sex offenders, especially those released from prison, are monitored under the so-called Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (Mappa), which include the police and probation services.
They are risked assessed in to one of three levels, which then dictates the intensity of their supervision.
A leaked internal document from the Ministry of Justice revealed officials are looking at how offenders in Mappa Level 1, the lowest risk category, “could be managed in a defensible way whilst enabling the effective use of resources”.
The paper, seen by ITV News, suggests fewer and shorter meetings with offenders and screening those in Level 2 to see if their management can be downgraded.
Last year it emerged that home visits of high risk sex offenders had been reduced to just four a year compared with once a month previously.
Harry Fletcher, assistant general secretary of Napo, the probation officers’ union, said: “What we have to remember is although the number of further serious offences committed by people in the top two brackets is very very low, 80 per cent of all further serious offences and we’re talking here about murder, robbery, rape are committed by people in the lowest risk category.”
A MoJ spokeswoman insisted the document was an internal draft and no decisions had been made.She added: “We are constantly looking to improve the management of known high-risk offenders in the community and ensure MAPPA is as effective a set of arrangements as possible.
“At the heart of all decisions, when making changes to MAPPA best practice guidance, is that public protection is the priority. This is the first phase of the consultation and no decisions have been made.”
A separate report, from the Chief Inspector of Probation, found risk assessments of offenders under the supervision of London Probation Trust was only good enough in 52 per cent of cases.
London probation service faced heavy criticism over its handling of Dano Sonnex, who went on to murder two French students, Gabriel Ferez and Laurent Bonomo, who were stabbed more than 200 times in south-east London in 2008.Blunders in his supervision meant he was at large when he should have already been recalled to prison.
Overall, the service was “getting there now”, with 74 per cent of its public protection work rated at a satisfactory level, up from just 54 per cent last year.
But despite the improvement overall, analyses of the risk of serious harm to others was of sufficient quality only 52 per cent of the time, up from 46 per cent last year.
